epepke
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Mycroft:
"It is a terrible tragedy. One of the terrible things abut poverty is that is leaves one less able to cope with natural disaster."
And we know who the main players in this tragedy are too or are we ignoring context again?
The World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank has controlled and directed Haiti`s economy for decades and never once gave any priority to land reform or schemes for reforestion which would have addressed the causes and solutions to just such "natural disasters".
Billions of aid went to the private sector and their sweat shop elite power base and the countryside with it`s peasants was ignored.
As late as July this year the international donors' conference in Washington DC. was primarily concerned with the private sector and the agricultural poor ignored again.
Another triumph for the profit addicted "internalional community" and their insidious financial institutions.
How about if they made it possible to survive in Haiti without cutting down trees?
I remember an article about one poor farmer in Haiti. He knew very well the implication of deforestation in the long run but as he said, his family were starving in the present.
The world is a strange place when the big upset is all about fundamentalist Moslems while the much more damaging, ever misanthropic ideology of greedy, fundamentalist neo-liberalism is prevalant in the real power centers of the world.
"It is a terrible tragedy. One of the terrible things abut poverty is that is leaves one less able to cope with natural disaster."
And we know who the main players in this tragedy are too or are we ignoring context again?
The World Bank, the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank has controlled and directed Haiti`s economy for decades and never once gave any priority to land reform or schemes for reforestion which would have addressed the causes and solutions to just such "natural disasters".
Billions of aid went to the private sector and their sweat shop elite power base and the countryside with it`s peasants was ignored.
As late as July this year the international donors' conference in Washington DC. was primarily concerned with the private sector and the agricultural poor ignored again.
Another triumph for the profit addicted "internalional community" and their insidious financial institutions.
How about if they made it possible to survive in Haiti without cutting down trees?
I remember an article about one poor farmer in Haiti. He knew very well the implication of deforestation in the long run but as he said, his family were starving in the present.
The world is a strange place when the big upset is all about fundamentalist Moslems while the much more damaging, ever misanthropic ideology of greedy, fundamentalist neo-liberalism is prevalant in the real power centers of the world.
epepke
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 9,264
Latest is more than 1070 dead, 1250 still reported missing. Awful.
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/st...1147130141.htm&sc=1102&photoid=20040922GNV107
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/st...1147130141.htm&sc=1102&photoid=20040922GNV107
epepke
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 9,264
Mycroft said:
From the article, it looks like they need medical supplies and water/purification units, but there's also a transportation problem; some areas can't be reached with the existing aid trucks. Maybe we could also call our congresscritters and get a few rugged vehicles over there for a while.
I'd like to put in a word for the people of Grenada who also suffered devistation. I can barely imagine what it would be like to be dirt poor and sitting in the path of a major hurricane on an impovershed island the size of a postage stamp.Mycroft said: